Foreclosures in San Diego County ticked up from September to October, but over the past 12 months are still down more than 65 percent.

Last month, lenders foreclosed on 173 properties in the county, up 18.5 percent from the 146 in September, real estate tracker DataQuick reported Tuesday. Percentage wise, it was the biggest month-to-month jump in foreclosures since they rose from 715 in December 2010 to 959 in January 2011, a 34.1 percent gain.

Mark Goldman, a loan officer and real-estate lecturer at San Diego State University, said the number of foreclosures can depend on internal factors at banks, and did not express concern about the jump.

“I just attribute that to noise,” he said. “It’s such a small number. In general, I would expect foreclosures to be going down as property values increase more and more. When there’s equity in the property you can sell it.”

In October, the median price of a home in San Diego County was $412,750, up 17.9 percent from October 2012, DataQuick reports. Prices bottomed out at $280,000 in January 2009, when there were 1,107 foreclosures.

Andrew LePage, analyst for DataQuick, said it’s difficult to define normal foreclosure levels in California because the real estate market here has booms and busts. But, he said, between 1998 and 2002, when the market had smaller booms and busts, the average was about 85 foreclosures per month.

“These foreclosure numbers have been bouncing around in a fairly narrow range,” LePage said of the recent figures. “What’s important is the context ... we’re so far off from the worst of times.”

Foreclosures peaked at 2,004 in the county in July 2008 during the Great Recession. But they’ve dropped overall more recently as home prices increased, giving people an out if they’re unable to make payments. Still, LePage said there are many people underwater on their homes, meaning they owe more than it’s worth. Some loans do remain from the subprime housing bubble of 2005 and 2006.

Goldman said he looks more at notices of default to gauge economic distress.

A bank can file a default notice 90 days after a missed payment, starting the foreclosure process. Filed notices rose from 466 in September to 541 in October, but year over year are down 43.5 percent. Goldman said he believed the increase was a small aberration from the overall trend of declining notices, and did not attribute it to the federal government shutdown from Oct. 1 to Oct. 16.

LePage said technically that foreclosures and notices of default stem from issues that began months prior, so any foreclosures because of the federal shutdown wouldn’t occur for another few months.